A non-coder builds real software with AI agents and writes down what broke, what it cost, and how he found out.https://itworkedonce.blog/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/i-cant-read-code/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/i-cant-read-code/Checks that need no code reading, and the nights a passing check hid a failure.Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/disk-cleaner-found-my-agents-mess/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/disk-cleaner-found-my-agents-mess/I had agents build a disk alarm overnight. On day one I called it useless. Two days later it cleared 15 GB, and most of that was my own agents downloading the same tools over and over.Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/patches-are-not-a-platform/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/patches-are-not-a-platform/On 8 July an agent asked what would worry me in an inspection. I had a short answer, and it was bad.Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/two-apps-built-overnight-zero-users/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/two-apps-built-overnight-zero-users/A dinner chooser and a voice-note bot. Both passed everything an agent could check. Only one of them ever reached anyone.Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/the-app-i-cant-read/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/the-app-i-cant-read/A client app with a real database, real logins and real financial data, built and run by agents for someone who can't read a line of it.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/one-client-saw-59-portfolios/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/one-client-saw-59-portfolios/A client account in a client's app saw every portfolio because the query trusted one stale flag, and no test had ever used a record that disagreed with itself.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/my-agents-forget-so-i-gave-them-a-wiki/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/my-agents-forget-so-i-gave-them-a-wiki/Every agent session starts blank, so I keep what matters in plain Markdown files they read first and write to last. It works until the files go stale.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/server-cost-half-the-quote/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/server-cost-half-the-quote/An agent told me to rent a 16 GB server for $84 a month. One measurement later, the advice was an 8 GB pilot at $44.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/agent-killed-my-open-apps/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/agent-killed-my-open-apps/An agent cleaning up one leftover process ran a single kill command that also matched my open apps, and I still can't say what else it took down.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/analytics-wasnt-broken-it-was-unprocessed/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/analytics-wasnt-broken-it-was-unprocessed/An agent read two days of Google Analytics numbers too early, filtered them to one traffic source, paused a campaign and wrote the error into a handover.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/my-guard-never-ran/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/my-guard-never-ran/I put a safety rule inside each agent's own file. In the setups I tested, it never fired. The same rule in the project settings did.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://itworkedonce.blog/posts/a-data-fix-rewrote-the-faq/https://itworkedonce.blog/posts/a-data-fix-rewrote-the-faq/Two fixes to a number in a client app also rewrote the text that explains it. I had approved the number. I found the new wording on launch day.Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT